The Court of Justice of the European Union (Europäischer Gerichtshof, EuGH) has decided that publishers of Facebook pages are jointly responsible for the processing of data of visitors (press release). By providing a fan page the publisher gives Facebook e.g. the possibility to set cookies, tracking user statistics. Therefore the publisher has to ensure data processing complies with European General Data Protection Regulations, including user consent, transparency of data usage, limitation of purpose, the right of data correction / deletion etc.

While not even the German government was able to get sufficient answers from Mark Zuckerberg, I doubt any fan page publisher can. The legal situation has - of course - room for interpretations, but I cannot take the risk of a legal case about GDPR compliance because of Facebook usage and decided to deactivate StitchBuddy's Facebook page this weekend.

I am sorry for the inconveniences this will cause. Please visit StitchBuddy's web site for news - maybe subscribe to its RSS feed - and don't hesitate to contact me by mail if you have any questions!